Looking to the future

All I have to say is what a week it has been. An awesome one at that. It has been full of so much joy, love, and emotion. The church I have been working with had it's annual youth conference and the guy I have been working for had the daunting task of creating all these videos and printed material for the conference and my job was to assist him in whatever capacity that I could, well mission accomplished. We produced some wonderful videos. Also during the conference because of the snow we were down 2 cameras and a camera person, so all the conference shooting was left up to me. I have never been so excited about running around with a camera. Needless to say the conference went off great and I got tons of footage to use. Because of all that went all I ended the week pretty exhausted. 

Today I worked with some of the girls from the halfway-like house that my mom works with teaching them about cover letters, resumes, and interview preparation. The class went really well. I was pretty proud of all that I had accomplished this past week. Doing all of this has really created more of a passion in me to do things like this. I have for a while wanted to teach but not necessarily in a classroom environment. In thinking about that it I started to think about what I want to do with my life. If anyone knows me they know that I am full of random information, I love doing research and looking things up (I am weird and I find that fun). It has been on my heart to start a business. All of this said I started to think about what type of business I wanted to have. I already have my Vaughn Agency name registered and all that jazz. Originally it was for a Casting Agency but I am leaning away from that and I have something else in mind. I love working with people and businesses and I started to think about how I could do that for a living and decided that being an image consultant is perfect for me. This isn't just a personal image consultant that helps you decide what to wear but a more deeper version of that. I want to help businesses and people learn how to market themselves. So many people are only business-minded and have a difficult time thinking about creative ways to build their business or even get their business launch and I am great at those things. I am good with commercial ideas, web design, color schemes, all kinds of things that would help grow a business. So I have decided that's what I want the Vaughn Agency to be all about. Now I am not exactly sure how to get the clients but I am doing some of this on a small scale. 

So what do you all think? This is a great time for some advice...

Taking off the Mask

What a week it has been, a wonderful one at that. I started helping do some media for the church that I attend and that was a blast. We got to shoot a couple of videos for a conference coming up this weekend and I got to edit them both. It is so nice to finally do something with my skills, I felt like they were going to waste. I started to reconnect with old friends and work on friendships with some new ones. This friday was a blast, a friend of mine was celebrating her end of chemo with a party of a lifetime. She decided to have Karaoke party and I felt like I had really come out of my shell.
In the past week just chatting with my mom, I started to have some revelations about myself. I realized that as open as I may appear actually I am not. I will easily let people into the surface part of my life but beyond that I am very closed off and guarded. For so many years (even before my past relationship) the people that I came to be so close to would hurt me. I thought that I was forgiving those people but I still held on to that hurt. I became a people pleaser, I only said and did what people expected me to do and say. The more those people would hurt me, the more I would try harder in thinking that "If I try harder, they won't hurt me". Because of this I gained a lot of superficial friendships on my part. Only the friends that dug harder and harder at the truth would I reveal it to them, but even then it wasn't my truest of true feelings. At one point in my life when it got really bad I began to convince myself of those lies.
Long ago, I started putting on a mask to cover all the hurt and pain, and as that hurt and pain began to build I took off that mask less often until one day I stopped taking it off all together. During that time I began to fear time to myself because I felt like I was sitting in a room with a person I didn't know and wasn't sure if I would like. I tend to get in a comfortable place in my life and stay there, refusing to go beyond that. I was comfortable in my mask. The recent events have created such a huge crack in my comfort zone that it has allowed me to take off my mask and to really allow me to see me. I have grown to love the woman that I am, all parts of me. That mask had deceived me into believing that I was defeated and I am not.
This weekend I had fun and I didn't have any of my comfortable crutches to hold onto, it was just me and of course this massive group of people. My friend's party taught me a lot. I let so many opportunities to celebrate life pass me by and I don't even think twice about it. I had forgotten what it was like to love life, to live life. I am tired of letting those moments pass me by unappreciated. I can't sit in comfort anymore, I just can't. I am so happy and I am ready to live again, unafraid and uncomfortably.

Day of Realization

I have not forgotten about my dedication to my blog, I just simply had nothing to say. I was suppose to start working with someone on a few new projects last week but unfortunately due to my lack of caffeine and sugar, I got sick. Last week was simply a sucky week! I couldn't work on anything really because of my massive migraines that left me basically unable to function for about 4 days, I had to deal with my ex, and I started craving all the things I stopped eating. Besides the suckiness there was some profound realizations which made most of it worth it. My week was mostly boring until friday, a day that will be further known as The Day of Realization, I was forced to speak to my demon, my ex. I have been unable to contact a former employer to give them my current address and was forced to break down and ask my ex if he could possibly forward any mail he receives to my parents address. Most people would react, "sure, No problem." It was pretty evident that he had moved on a while ago and I as well, this conversation should go smoothly I repeated to myself in my head. Not the case, it has become more clear that my ex is not like most people. Me simply asking for my mail equaled me being obsessed of him (I laughed when I discovered this). Also he brought it to my attention that I was sharing too much personal information in status updates to mutual friends and that it was really difficult for him to read. This all coming from the man that premeditated a trip to cheat on me, the person who on the day of revealing this to me told me he didn't care about me anymore, and everything he had ever said was a lie. As hurtful as that all was I was the person strong enough to quit my job at the company we both worked at, moved to a completely different state, and discontinued all contact with him. You see our relationship was built around patterns. He would cheat or the abuse would go to far, I would walk away, he would convince me that he had changed, I believed him, and inevitably we would get back together. This happened for 4+ years. I didn't know how to think or speak for myself anymore, all I knew how to do was what he wanted me to do or what he wanted me to be. Until that one day, I had had enough. I would no longer stand by a man who hit me or put me down every time I disagreed. I had finally reclaimed my voice and I wanted me back and I am proud to say I have found myself again. I know who I am and what I want and that makes me so happy, a happiness that was hidden for so many years and covered with denial of what was really going on. So coming back to friday, it really angered me that this man that I don't care about anymore would even dare question the fact that I have any interest in him and that was beyond me. That very brief conversation reminded me of that little puff that I took the other week and my reaction to it. This was a person that despite it all I loved him and never thought that I would be without him and even though there had been no temptation to be with him there was always that question buried deep in the back of my mind of "I wonder if he has really changed" and that conversation reminded me of how much he hadn't and how I really had no interest of ever being friends with him. Just like smoking, those feelings I had once had are totally different and I am so much happier without it and him. It feels so good to officially say that I have completely moved on and that is why I marked friday as my Day of Realization!